Justice.

When John the Baptist was arrested Jesus began his preaching.
He said, “Repent and believe in the gospel”. That is, look back on
your sins with sorrow and contrition, and believe the good news that God
will forgive you and make a new life possible, a new life that involves
living a certain way. And so I am talking this Lent about the virtues,
beginning with the human moral virtues, cardinal among them prudence,
justice, temperance, and fortitude. I’ve done prudence, which discerns
the true good and the right means to achieve it. Today, let’s think
about justice.

Justice is a good thing, and everybody wants it, especially for
themselves. To each his due. Each should get what he or she deserves.
Human rights demand respect. When I was a child I pledged allegiance
to the flag and to the republic, one nation under God with liberty and
justice for all. Then, we all sat down to our studies, and if someone
was copying off of my test paper, or broke the rules of the game on the
playground, I knew justice had been violated. “Not fair!” comes
naturally to our lips. It’s less obvious what we owe others, perhaps
because of self-interest, but what others are due is often obvious
enough if we take the time to put ourselves in their shoes.

For example, you crunch somebody’s fender in the parking lot, and
nobody saw it. Do you leave your name and phone number? The virtue of
justice says – yes! They didn’t deserve that, my own negligence caused
it, I owe them compensation. Or, you are remodeling someone’s kitchen
and it turns out to cost less than your originally estimated. Do you
stick with your original estimate? Justice says, no! if I had known
then what I know now I would have estimated less, so that’s the fair
price to charge, otherwise I’d be taking advantage of their ignorance. I
owe my customer the truth, and a fair price for a good job.

These are examples of what they call commutative justice, having
to do with the exchange of goods and services. Distributive justice has
to do with the relations between individuals and groups. Like paying
taxes. In justice I should be willing to support the system from which I
benefit. Freeloaders are unjust because they are getting something for
nothing, forcing others to support them when they could be supporting
themselves. So, do you cheat on your taxes by hiding income or claiming
deductions that don’t apply to you? Or do you write tax laws to
benefit your cronies? These are matters of justice.

A subcategory of distributive justice is social justice, which
directs attention to situations where customary ways, or perhaps even
the law, deny people what they are due. Racism can do that, even if it
is trying to remedy past racism. And there can be established patterns
of property ownership, educational opportunities, or cultural
expectations that keep people trapped in poverty. Some years ago
Archbishop Helder Camara in Brazil said something like “When I feed the
poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a
communist.” These days, if you inquire into the causes of poverty you
might as likely be called a right wing extremist, blaming the poor for
their drug addictions and poor work ethic. But exploiting the welfare
system to escape work and responsibility is indeed unjust, and doing
nothing to change a system that keeps people dependent is also unjust.

Justice is the virtue that respects the right of others and gives
them what they are due. This is obviously important, but it is not
enough, because although we all seem to have an innate sense of justice,
we have big arguments about what people are entitled to. For example,
consider this quote:

”At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own
concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of
human life.”

It’s a little high-flying, but it sounds pretty obvious. I wouldn’t
want to tell somebody that they don’t have a right to their own ideas
about the meaning of life. Recognize the quote? It’s from a Supreme
Court decision, Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, 1992, which struck down
restrictions on abortion passed by the Pennsylvania legislature.

The logic here is that if, in your personal concept of the
mystery of human life you decide that a the little human being living in
the womb is not due the right to keep living, then he or she is not due
the right to keep living. Pretty amazing logic. It implies that there
is no objective basis for determining matters of justice, of right, of
what people are due. It’s all a matter of my personal concept of
meaning of the universe, And it implies that if you are strong enough
to impose your concept of meaning on someone else, it’s no injustice
to impose it. Might makes rights.

Now some say, “so what?” This has always been the case. No
human society has ever been anything more than some imposing their
concept on others. The rich write the laws, and the winners write the
history. There’s a little truth to this. The police and the military
are evidence that human society sometimes requires force to maintain
itself, history is full of tyrants keeping order by coercion – but we
are speaking of justice, of what is right, of what one is due, not
merely of what one may happen to want and can force on others.

Is it possible, is there an objective basis for knowing what is
right and just? I think so. Frankly, I think the Supreme Court was
just blowing smoke. But discerning justice requires a high degree of
objectivity. One must be able to step back from one’s own desires and
recognize them for what they are – fickle, limited, personal, not
necessarily grounded in reality or binding on other people. To be that
objective isn’t easy, because it requires a concept of existence that
doesn’t put oneself at the center of the universe. Which is why I would
submit that it is extremely difficult, maybe well-nigh impossible, to
give others their due unless I give God His due; what we mean when, in
response to “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God”, we say “it is
right and just.”

=====

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Pulled the trigger on the 301 MOVE IT option
June 1, 2014. Working my way through all the webpages. .

Regards,

Vic

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Silence in the face of evil is speaking. "We've had enough of exhortations to be silent!
Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten
because of silence." Saint Catherine of Siena

“An
error which is not resisted is approved; a truth which is not defended is
suppressed…. He who does not oppose an evident crime is open to the suspicion of
secret complicity.” – Pope Felix III

“Do not forget your purpose and destiny as God's creatures.
What you are in God's sight is what you are and nothing more”—Justice Clarence Thomas

"Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is the sin committed by the person who claims to have a 'right' to persist in evil-in any sin at all-and who thus rejects redemption." Pope Saint John Paul the GreatDOMINUM ET VIVIFICANTEM

"Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it, and, indeed, to neglect to confound evil men-when we can do it-is no less a sin than to encourage them." Pope St. Felix III

If a purposeful violator of the Constitution who is a sworn officer of the governemt is not a domestic enemy of America and a traitor, then
there is no such thing, and the Constitution itself is without meaning,
and America has lost its grounding and its very purpose for being. Anti-American-Court

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Never be lukewarm.Life itself demands passion.He who is indifferent to God has already forfeited his soul.He who is indifferent to politics has already forfeited his liberty.In America, religion is not mere window dressing and citizenship is not a spectator sport.Do not allow our common destiny as a whole people to just happen without your input. Seek the Truth; find the Way; live the Life; please God, and live forever.

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"We belong to the Church militant; and She is militant because on earth the powers of darkness are ever restless to encompass Her destruction. Not only in the far-off centuries of the early Church, but down through the ages and in this our day, the enemies of God and Christian civilization make bold to attack the Creator’s supreme dominion and sacrosanct human rights.”--Pope Pius XII

"It is not lawful to take the things of others to give to the poor. It is a sin worthy of punishment, not an act deserving a reward, to give away what belongs to others."--St. Francis of Assisi

Truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance
may deride it, but in the end, there it is.—Winston
Churchill

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who
deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.—Ayn Rand

Atheist Genesis:

In the beginning there was nothing, and nothing happened to nothing.
And then nothing accidentally exploded and created everything.
And then some bits of everything accidentally encountered other bits of everything and formed some new kinds of everything.
And then some bits of everything accidentally arranged themselves into self-replicating bits of everything.
And then some self-replicating bits of everything accidentally arranged themselves into dinosaurs.
See?

“ … for I have sworn upon
the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind
of man.” wrote Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush in
the year of our Lord 1800. The context
involved resistance to any form of Christianity or Deism legally imposing
itself throughout the USA. We must wonder what he might say
about our current government's forced imposition of strict secularism – i.e.,
anti-theism – throughout the USA. I submit that legally enforced secularism of society, like theocracy, like Marxism,
and like Islam, is, precisely, a form of tyranny over the mind of man.Nothing good can come from the religious cleansing of Judaeo-Christian society. Government imposed secularism is just another form of theocracy.